Originally published February 3, 2021 , updated on January 17, 2023

LinkedIn is often not the most obvious choice when deciding between social media marketing platforms, but for B2B opportunities, LinkedIn is a goldmine. According to the Sophisticated Marketer’s Guide to LinkedIn, 82% of marketers in the B2B sphere use LinkedIn for their content marketing. Because LinkedIn is often frequented by c-suite executives, top-level decision-makers and industry thought-leaders, the right LinkedIn lead generation strategy can be very beneficial for B2B businesses. 

LinkedIn can also be used to reinforce your brand’s credibility and increase your website traffic. This infographic from LinkedIn showcases more accurately the platform’s power as a marketing tool:

The right LinkedIn lead generation strategy can have amazing effects for your business. Unfortunately, promoting on LinkedIn can also be extremely tricky, and you can’t appear overly promotional.

Now that we know exactly why LinkedIn is such a good platform, let’s take a look at seven LinkedIn lead generation tips.

1. Complete Your LinkedIn Profile

Personal Profile

Maintaining a complete and up-to-date profile is one of the most crucial aspects of LinkedIn lead generation. Your profile offers the fist glimpse of your offerings and skills to recruiters and potential clients. Because of this, it must be able to make a captivating first impression. This is especially true for freelancers and entrepreneurs looking for new assignments.

Your profile should contain relevant and comprehensive information about you, including your academic background, professional achievements, job titles and work experience. You should mention any projects you’ve worked on, with a clear description which outlines your role and contributions. 

Additionally, you can request recommendations from colleagues and employers to strengthen your credibility. 

Company Page

Besides your personal profile, you should also create a company page for your brand or business. Here you can provide details about your company, including its location, size and years in operation, as well as the products and services you provide. You should also include a high-definition company logo, as well as your website URL.

Having an up-to-date company page can make your brand appear more professional and trustworthy. 

2. Don’t Ignore Optimization

Remember that search engine optimization (SEO) isn’t limited to Google. You can also use the same principles to optimize your company page and LinkedIn profile. Following these SEO principles ensures your brand shows up when someone searches for related product and services, on or off LinkedIn. This makes SEO extremely beneficial for LinkedIn lead generation.

Step one of optimizing your profile or page is to identify which keywords you want to rank for. Doing so requires understanding the words and phrases your audience will likely use to search for your products and services. Just as with SEO, you can optimize your page or profile for long-tail keywords to target leads who may be further down the funnel. 

Once you have identified your keywords, you need to incorporate them into your profile. You can use them in your description, job titles, skills and any other sections. You should also run a search on LinkedIn for these keywords, looking at the profiles and pages which appear. That way, you can see how they have used keywords, and try to emulate their methods.

3. Connect with Profile Visitors

Each time your profile gets a visitor, LinkedIn sends you a “Someone has viewed your profile” email. While most people ignore these notifications, they are very useful for LinkedIn lead generation. When someone views your profile, it’s often because they’ve taken an interest in your products and services. Therefore, you can use that as an “in” when you reach out to connect with them. 

You can also make use of the  “who’s viewed your profile” section of your profile drop-down menu. This way, you can connect with potential customers who have already seen your page or profile and been exposed to your products or services.

4. Publish Engaging Content

While SEO optimization is a good way to make yourself more discoverable, the best way to keep visitors on your page for longer is to publish relevant, high-quality and original content. Doing so helps to position you as an authority on certain relevant subjects, strengthening your reputation as a thought-leader in your industry. Brand awareness and authority are vital for LinkedIn lead generation. 

When creating content for LinkedIn, it’s important to understand why senior-level and c-suite executives spend their time on the platform. They aren’t looking for redundant, oft-repeated platitudes and run-of-the-mill blog posts. They are looking for content which can educate them and keep them informed on the latest trends in their industry.  

Therefore, the content you publish should be relevant and thought-provoking, whilst maintaining your unique perspective. 

Posts should also be accompanied by eye-catching graphics, presentations, headlines, videos and statistics, to keep them interesting. Avoid posting too much self-promotional content. 

In addition to creating engaging and original content, you must also ensure that you post regularly. You may even think about creating a content calendar which outlines the posts and topics you’d like to cover in the next few months. Consistency is key for LinkedIn lead generation, and staying active can help to increase your engagement, which can have a knock-on effect for your lead gen. 

Create Conversion-Friendly Posts

While your published content should be original, thought-provoking and high-quality, you should also add in conversion-friendly elements such as emojis, captions and bullet points. Posts should also be accompanied by appropriate calls-to-action and links. This is useful for LinkedIn lead generation, as it drives more traffic to your website or landing pages.

Provide your audience with additional resources, instead of self-promotional jargon, encouraging them to look for more information on your brand. 

A good example is the LinkedIn Company Page of General Electric.

They don’t bombard their viewers with promotional content. Rather, they provide interesting posts which link back to the company website. This way, they increase their web traffic, helping them to acquire genuine leads. 

5. Join LinkedIn Groups

Another effective way of improving your LinkedIn lead generation strategy and widening your audience is to join any relevant LinkedIn groups you can find. But don’t restrict yourself to groups that solely cater to your specific niche. You can join any group that is even tangentially related to your niche. This way, you can help find new demographics to target and increase your traffic.

LinkedIn has also provided a guide to selecting and joining the right groups. 

Once you’ve joined a group, you must make sure to contribute to conversations and post relevant content. While you can include links to your landing pages and blog posts to increase your web traffic, you should avoid being too self-promotional. 

Joining groups, apart from helping you make new connections, can also help to position your brand as an industry thought-leader and authority. 

6. Utilize LinkedIn’s Advertising Options

Possibly one of the more obvious LinkedIn lead generation tips, you should explore the various advertising options offered by LinkedIn. One of the easiest ways to generate traffic, engagement and leads is to create sponsored posts. You should sponsor your most valuable and engaging content to maximise ROI. 

LinkedIn’s advertising tools offer precise and specific targeting, helping you to reach the right audience. 

As an example, HubSpot made use of sponsored content on LinkedIn to generate 400% more leads than other lead generation channels.

Some have also observed that LinkedIn lead quality is far superior compared to those generated from other channels.

Other advertising tools to include in your LinkedIn lead generation strategy include InMail campaigns and regular ads. InMail campaigns allow you to reach the LinkedIn inboxes of potential clients using a personalised message, or upcoming offer. 

7. Utilize LinkedIn Pulse for Lead Generation

A news platform integrated with LinkedIn, LinkedIn Pulse is also available as a separate app. Here, you can post articles, allowing you to reach a much larger audience than that available through your own blog. This is similar to guest blogging, but on a massive platform with a large audience base and no approval required from editors. Posting articles on LinkedIn Pulse helps you to reach a large and relevant audience, again helping you to position yourself as an industry expert and authority. 

Essentially a news platform, LinkedIn Pulse is best suited to articles on the latest happenings and industry trends.

Below, we’ve provided some tips on getting the most out of LinkedIn Pulse.

Optimize Your Headlines

Your headline is the first thing a reader sees, and so, should be compelling enough to make them want to read more. Short, catchy headlines are the first step towards encouraging people to read your posts.

Use Visuals

Using images in your posts can make them more engaging and attractive than just a boring all-text post. Make sure to use eye-catching visuals to grab audience attention and increase your chances of being read.

Add Links to Your Website

As with guest posting on any other website, you can add links to your website in the articles posted on LinkedIn Pulse. While you shouldn’t be too self-promotional, this is a good LinkedIn lead generation strategy for increasing leads and traffic. Just make sure that any links you include are relevant and useful. 

Cross-Promote Your Posts on Other Platforms

If you’re using guest posting as a part of your LinkedIn lead generation strategy, you need to make sure that enough people read your posts. Promoting your articles outside of the platform allows you to enhance their reach further, netting more reads and likes.

Because of the algorithm, the more views your articles have, the more they will be displayed, resulting in even higher organic reach.

Below is an example of how Guy Kawasaki, a popular marketer, lays out his posts. He uses high-quality images with a catchy headline, also adding external links to relevant products and services.

Conclusion

LinkedIn is one of the best platforms to connect with industry professionals and generate hot leads. There several LinkedIn lead generation strategies you can implement, and with them, you can grab the attention of potential clients and kick your marketing strategy up to 11. 

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